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Monday, 14 November 2011

Jim's Column 12.11.11

Coventry City’s poor form continued last week with a home
defeat to the league leaders Southampton. Even with the club’s diverse recent
records this was still a surprise to me as City have a tremendous record
against the Saints. Saturday’s match was the 55th league encounter
between the two clubs in Coventry and the victory was only Saints’ seventh win
in the city, and the first since the opening day of the season in 1999.Between 1950 and 1987 the Saints travelled
to Highfield Road for 26 league encounters and failed to win a single game with
City winning eighteen games including heavy defeats in Saints’ two promotion
seasons 1959-60 (4-1) and 1965-66 (5-1). The latter being the momentous game
when George Hudson scored his memorable goal by flicking the ball over Saints’
centre-half Tony Knapp and racing around the statuesque stopper to volley home.

Now the Saints are setting the pace in the Championship with
an interesting blend of experienced players and youth from one of the most productive
youth schemes in the country that in recent years has helped fund the club’s
revival with sales of starlets like Theo Walcott, Gareth Bale and Alex
Oxlade-Chamberlain.

Another City youngster made his debut as a substitute last
weekend. Jordan Willis is just a couple of months past his 17th
birthday but his appearance in a first-team shirt earns him a place in the top
ten youngest City debutants which now reads thus:-

Coventry-born Jordan, who is one day younger than Conor
Thomas when Conor made his debut as a substitute against Crystal Palace in the
FA Cup in January, is the third youngster to join the top 10 in the last
fifteen months.

Jim Ridley wrote to me recently and remembers that in the
1970s he watched Northern Ireland play a full international against Portugal at
Highfield Road. He cannot remember the details and asked me to refresh his
memory and tell him if the great Eusebio played for Portugal.

The game, a World Cup qualifying game, was played at
Highfield Road on 28 March 1973.The civil
unrest in Northern Ireland at the time forced the Irish Football Association to
seek alternative venues for their home games and this was the first game played
outside the province. The Irish team featured several famous names including
Tottenham’s world-class goalkeeper Pat Jennings, former City midfielder Dave
Clements, who had left City eighteen months earlier to join Sheffield
Wednesday, and Martin O’Neill of Nottingham Forest who would later become a
very successful manager with Leicester and Celtic. Sadly George Best had
announced his international retirement and did not play. The Portuguese, whilst
not the force they had been at the 1966 World Cup, were favourites to qualify
from a group that also included Bulgaria and Cyprus, the latter had severely
dented Northern Ireland’s chances by beating them in Cyprus a month earlier.
Two stars of the 1966 Portugal team were still in the team, Eusebio, the star
striker and Simoes, a classy winger in his day. Eusebio scored a penalty
equalising O’Neill’s earlier goal and the game, watched by a crowd of 11,273,
ended 1-1. Later the Irish played internationals at Fulham’s Craven Cottage,
Hillsborough, Anfield and Goodison Park.

On 16 March 1968 two brothers were taken to Highfield Road
for the younger one’s birthday treat to watch the Sky Blues play Manchester
United for the first time in the First Division. The younger brother Paul Moses
was a United fan and emailed me with his memories of the game. They were on the
terraces and as the crowd got bigger and bigger (the attendance was 47,111, the
second highest in the club’s history) the police allowed children on to the
running track. City won a memorable 2-0 victory over the Reds who were three
games away from lifting the European Cup but whose supporters blamed the defeat
on a long midweek trip to Poland. The result was a crucial one for both clubs
as City eventually avoided relegation by just one point whilst United were
pipped at the Championship post by their Manchester rivals by two points. A
different outcome that day would have relegated City and handed the title to
United.

Paul and his brother Peter wanted to know City’s line up
from that game. It was as follows:

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About Me

I have supported Coventry City FC since my first visit to Highfield Road in 1962. I am the club's official historian and have a regular column in the Coventry Telegraph. Here I would like to enable my readers who can't buy the paper to access my columns and comment.